The next day after school ended, Jordan confronted me. There was no better term to put it when she came up to me, looking into my eyes for a few seconds before she spoke.
"Can I talk with you for a moment, Nina?" she asked.
I knew something was up, but I nodded.
In total silence, Jordan walked me to the baseball field. It was empty. Then she asked me to sit down on the bench.
"Why did you bring me here?" I asked her. She sat down beside me, looking slightly uncomfortable and stressed. Her expression became more worrisome every passing minute. But then she had no choice but to tell me whatever had bothering her.
"Nina, are you pregnant?" she asked at last.
I couldn't stand the agony of anticipation, so I was glad she made it straightforward. With a deep sigh, I turned away from her imploring gaze. Jordan saw that I was worn out by all the secret. My answer would mean a full confession, and she braced herself for it.
"Took you long enough to figure out," I said. To stop myself from crying, I put my hand on my stomach, but my tactic failed when I was actually confirming my answer to her.
"How...how could that be..." for the first time, Jordan the wise, could barely form a proper sentence.
"It doesn't matter how, does it?"
"It does! Nina, it does matter to me!"
I looked at her through my tears, stunned by her outburst.
"Jordan..."
"I know. I know," she said. "But I just don't understand. You were in love with her, weren't you?"
"I still am."
"Then what happened?"
"Don't worry, nothing heinous happened to me, but I would rather not talk about it."
Jordan didn't speak for a time. Her eyes never left my face.
"The real father isn't around, is he?"
I didn't know what made me say this, but maybe the truth was too big and slippery, it had to come out one way or the other.
"It's not a he."
She stared at me, stunned.
"What?"
"I've got to go," I declared and got up to leave.
"Nina, wait!" Jordan came from behind me. She wrapped her arms around my shoulders to stop me. Then I realized she was crying.
"I'm sorry," she said tearfully.
"Why did you say that?" I asked.
"I wished I were there to protect you. I wished I had fought for you so that this wouldn't have happened."
I touched her arms and turned around to face her, wiping my friend's tears with my thumbs.
"No, Jordan, it's a lot different than what you think, and there's nothing you could have changed. I would have chosen it the same way."
"Nina...tell me what really happened?"
I smiled at her saddened face.
"It's best for you not to know," I said. "Trust me."
~*~
I started noticing ‘flutters’ inside me. It felt like butterflies in my stomach or popcorn popping. It was a very strange feeling but also amazing. I told Allecra our child started moving quite a lot recently. Half of me was growing excited, but another half was also petrified. I didn't know how the little one would come out. I could either face this fear head-on or continue to let it be a major part of my life. But I could say I now began to overcome it, slowly.
At last, I finished all my credits for high school and took SAT test and graduated a few months early. Then I spent the remaining time, preparing for my childbirth. Soon Piper and Jay started talking about their prom and graduation day, both of which I wasn’t going to attend.
Week after week passed by like a train wagon. I was nine months pregnant. My stomach had grown to the size of a watermelon and quite heavy for my small frame.
It was almost eleven at night, and I was wide awake, still staring at the ceiling. Suddenly, there was like the crest of a wave of a period cramp. I lay there with my mind racing for a while. Then I got up and took long deep breaths the way I had done often during my pregnancy.
The whole house was sleeping. I had another wave—another rolling cramp. I grimaced at my swollen stomach.
No, could it be?
But it hadn't reached my due date yet.
I went slowly to have a hot bath, still feeling jittery with this new sense of discomfort. After half an hour, I felt better and wondered if it was just a normal cramp.
But as I grabbed the towel rack, another one shot up from my belly.
"Ow!" I cried out loud and hugged my stomach. The pain was as sharp as when you stub your toes.
Then I felt a popping sensation followed by a gush of fluid from between my thighs, spilling all over the bathroom floor.
My water broke.
I gasped in a shocking realization.
As I suspected and feared, I knew I was going to go into labor soon.
I tried to put on my bathrobe and reached for my phone. My trembling hand dialed Piper as she was the last a person I had contacted. After a long ringing, she finally picked up. Her voice sounded groggy.
"King?"
"Piper, it's me," I said between gasps. "Please I need your help..."
"Nina, are you okay? You sound like you're going into labor..."
"Actually I am."
"Oh snap!" she said. "Wait right there, Nina! I'll go get mom."
The phone went dead and a few moments later, Aunt Vikki and Piper found me clutching my stomach on the wet floor.
"Oh god," Piper gasped.
"Piper, go wake Jason to get the car. Your dad isn't home," my aunt ordered as she came to me. "We need to get Nina to hospital."
"Oh right, okay!"
"Nina, don't worry, we'll take you to the hospital. Can you stand?"
I nodded and bit my lips from crying as she helped me up.
In the hospital, I was being moved around the corridor and everything blurred like I was being airlifted between boroughs like a whale.
Inside the delivery room, I had a gripping panic attack when the nurse was preparing the needle. The other lubed me up and strapped monitors to me, and a chorus of fetal heart tones beeped out in the room like a horse galloping. I felt embarrassed like I was having my first period when they started to open my legs. The first time I lay there, I started to cry with some kind of panic and mixed emotions. My aunt tried to calm me down, stroking my head and telling me not to be afraid.
"Your body will know what to do, it's in your nature, Nina, you're going to be fine," she said. Of course, I couldn't tell her how the evaluation had failed us in this aspect.
"No, no, I can't do this," I sobbed.
I had spent my entire nine month scared to death of the tray covered in sharp sterilized tools and the doctor trying to cut me. Now this nightmare was one I couldn't wake up from, because it was real.
"Nina, calm down, the doctor will give you epidural to help with the pain, just stay calm," Aunt Vikki soothed me.
When the doctor walked in, they did give me the drug.
It didn't work.
I had two failed epidurals and still felt the pain. The anesthesiologist gave me the saddest look and told me that for some women, it just wouldn't work. I was going into labor naturally.
The contractions were getting worse. Every time a contraction would come, my lower back would slowly begin to seize up as though it would snap. I felt the muscles inside me were slowly twisting harder and harder like a clenched fist until it became almost unbearable. I let out a strangled scream. It was the most horrible pain I had ever experienced. I thought I had imagined the worst of it, but I was wrong.
Sweat-beaten and trembling with chills, I cried and prayed to my mother to help me.
"She's seven centimeters dilated," the doctor said. "I could see the head now."
When they told me to push, I did as hard I could. The pain was like having my insides twisted, pulled, and wrangled out like a wet rag. If I fought it, the pain became worse. It was like my whole pelvis was made of breaking glass, piercing my own womb with its shards. The pain was so bad that in the middle of
one push I wished I could walk away from my body. I lost my breaths several times and thought I was going to die.
"The mother needs oxygen."
"Should we perform the caesarean..." one of the nurses suggested.
"No, the baby is crowning,” the doctor said. “She can make it."
"Nina, you can do it," my aunt's voice said. "Just a little more."
Hot tears streamed from my eyes, mixing with cold sweat. I was caught in the undertow of a tidal wave of pain and being trapped under it, terrified and helpless — like I was drowning and dying.
But in the intense moment of my labor, my feverish mind thought of Allecra, and how she would be here to comfort me if she could.
I bit my bottom lip and tried to push with all my remaining strength.
For our little one, the voice in my head said.
I wasn't going to let go of us.
Suddenly, I felt a sheering burn and a slow slip of my baby's head outside, and I knew the wave had released me back to the surface. The doctor pulled my newborn out. The sight of the fluid and blood-covered tiny thing made my heart burst with relief and joy.
"Nina, it's a girl!" My aunt told me.
But a few seconds went by in silence. I didn't hear the crying as it was supposed to be. Instead the doctor and nurses were fumbling around my little one on the other table, where they seemed to perform a certain medical procedure.
"What's wrong?" I asked weakly, noticing my aunt's frozen face. I had forgotten about the agony I had just gone through and was staring wild eyes for the answer. Why didn't they give me my child?
After about fifteen minutes, new fear entered my heart. It wasn't the kind of fear I had ever known. This one was the worst of all fear. The doctor shook her head and sighed.
She walked towards me.
"The baby didn't make it," she said. "I'm so sorry."
I felt like the air was knocked out of my lungs. My body went cold all over, and I was almost on the verge of passing out when I heard it.
No, this can't be happening.
"I want to see my baby, my baby, give me my baby!" I demanded.
"Nina..."
"Give me my little one...please!"
The doctor nodded to the nurse, who had cleaned up and wrapped my daughter in a white blanket. She came to place my girl in my waiting arms.
I stared at my daughter—at Allecra's daughter for the first time.
God, she's so beautiful.
But her tiny nose didn't breathe, and her tiny hands didn't move.
She was my only hope in this world.
How could this be?
I burst out crying. I wished it were me instead. My aunt wiped her tears as she watched me held my baby to my breast. I removed the blanket and held my little girl against my chest to warm her tiny body. Her skin was cold and pale.
Then I found myself humming a song I didn't even know. I touched her little fingers, making little tunes and leaning my cheek against her head with tears flowing ceaselessly.
My daughter had come to earth perfect in every way. Why had she not opened her eyes? Was I being punished for my crime of being born difficult to my mother that I deserved to lose this child?
I was tormented with grief to see my baby this way. I had never wished for anything harder than I wished that little heart to palpitate with life.
My forehead rested against my daughter's as if in supersensible communication.
“Please,” I begged over and over.
Then a sensation prickled in my bones, and I felt I had discovered a delicate link of interaction somewhere. It was a clairvoyance that new mothers possess but which had taken me awhile to discover. At last, I closed my eyes and was able to understand an esoteric language from my little one.
My face broke into a shining smile and more tears slide down my cheeks. A soft nasal cry cut through the silence as the first angelic heartbeat sounded in my daughter's chest. Another cry, and I gasped in pure joy. In that moment, I received a tacit confirmation from my little girl that she would soon be ready to claim her glorious presence on this planet.
~*~
For three days, they had kept my baby in an incubator. In the cocoon of a closed hygienic atmosphere, everything was being done to encourage the steady progress of my precious little thing.
I sat with my gloved hand on the side of plastic capsule, never taking my eyes off the tiny movement. The heart monitor showed green peaks at regular intervals.
Throughout the long nights I would talk to her in an empathetic voice of a mother, about how much she meant to me in the unparalleled world. I also told Allecra about our baby.
"Our baby is born now, Allecra," I whispered. "I wish you were here to see your baby. She’s in a capsule like she just arrived from outerspace, and she looks just like you."
Those were the times I missed Allecra so intensely and with such a passion I just wanted to scream for her.
The doctor finally let me breastfed the little one after they took the last examination. I was relieved and overjoyed that they found nothing wrong with her. The little one woke up and opened those sparkling bright eyes for the first time.
Oh how they just took my breath away!
"This child is miraculous,” the doctor said with her kind smile. “She's a gift to earth from heaven."
I smiled back. My aunt and Piper came to see me.
"Oh geez, mom, look at her eyes!" Piper exclaimed with a fascinated look. "They're...wait...blue? Green?"
"Turquoise," I said without taking my stare off my child.
"She really is a beautiful pumpkin," Aunt Vikki said, smiling. "Well, she kind of reminds me of someone."
"Yeah, I think so too, mom," Piper agreed.
But I didn’t say anything and let their mind wander.
After the breastfeeding, they took turn holding the little one. The doctor came again and said we could go home if we wanted to. A while later, Robert and Jay arrived. When they spoke now, it was with the penitential tones of the humbled. It seemed like somehow my daughter had affected them and made them respect me, being a mother and all.
Jay took a look at my baby’s face and raised his brows.
"How come your baby has a head full of blonde hair already?" He said. "And she looks a lot like your ex-girlfriend, too. Those eyes..."
Piper gave him a nudge in the rip.
"Can you stop being an insensitive jerk and shut up for once?"
"It's alright Piper," I said, smiling. Actually I was pleased they all thought that way.
"So you got a name for the baby already?" This time Robert asked.
"I talked to my dad yesterday," I said. "We both agreed that we should call her after my mom."
"Elvira?" my aunt said. "That's a good name, Nina. I should have thought of that."
"Yes, we will call her Elvira," I said, turning my gaze back at the now sleeping angel in my arms.
"Aw...that's an adorable name!" Piper said. "Or we can call her Ella or Little El."
"Sounds like a cool rapper name, you know, Lil El?" Jay chimed in.
My aunt shook her head and then turned to me.
"Your mom would have been so proud of you," Aunt Vikki said and stroked my hair. "You are such a very strong and brave woman just like her."
I had always thought of myself as a coward, but now to hear someone telling I was brave made me tear up with gratitude.
"Thank you, Aunt Vikki, and everyone for everything," I said. "I couldn't do this without you all."
That evening we returned home with Elvira in my arms. She slept most of the times and only awoke for me to breastfeed her. I could hardly believe my own heart that it could love this much when I looked at those bright galactic eyes.
What was this actual creation of divine miracle that somehow this universe allowed to be organized inside me? And now here she was in my arms like magic. It was like the whole universe had opened up to me again.
I wondered how Allecra would have felt if she knew that she was
now a—daddy? A mommy? But whatever she was, I was sure she would have been just as overwhelmed with all this joy like me.
After I finished feeding my little girl, I went to my closet and pulled out the Pandora's box. The sadness and grief stuck inside it no longer bothered me. I had one thing that protected me now.
Taking out Allecra's necklace, I stared at the dull sparks of the Erytus stone. Then I came back to the crib and held it up for our baby to see. She seemed to look at it and cooed adorably back. Her soft little hands jerked as if delighted. The stone swayed around, amusing her. My heart just melted at the sight.
"See that, honey?" I said softly to her. "Your...mom-dad gave it to me on my birthday. Now I want you to have it. Thank you for bringing hope back into my life. I love you so much."
Then I fastened the necklace around her neck. Elvira looked at me with some sort of intellectual flash in her gaze.
All of a sudden, an iridescent light lit up from the stone as well as those celestial turquoise eyes of my daughter.
I gasped and covered my mouth at the strange, yet familiar happening.
The bright glow lasted only a second before it ceased, but I knew something special had taken place.
Elvira yawned as if in oblivion. I touched her face and a strong surge of reassurance washed over me.
It was a faint sign of promise.
Chapter 48
After giving birth to my daughter, I had a vivid dream of Allecra for the first time. Before a wide arched window, Allecra stood watching the winged-whales sailed through the sky like zeppelins. A school of mothers and their babies flapped their wings in the air, sending gusts of the wind against the crystal dome of the city towers.
A dark violet moon hung low by the edge of the sleeping sea. Another silver moon rose high among the stars, constellations upon constellations of bright twinkles spreading across the silent auroric night. Bellow sprawled authentic buildings, their porous pocket, and bubble windows lit with golden light. Circling metal-paved streets within transparent tubes glinted like silver snakes under the moon glow.
Yet despite all its outlandish beauty, the city was more of an immense tomb, too quiet and seemingly empty of life.
Allecra gazed up at the silver moon. Then her turquoise eyes closed as if she was trying to summon a thought in her mind. But nothing came. She gave herself an imperceptible shake of her head.
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